50 years ago in Italy there was one person over 65 for every child under the age of 6. Just before Christmas, Italy's national statistics office, Istat, revealed that the ratio is now 5.6 to 1. The population pyramid has inverted, with 24% of the Italian population now over 65.
As the death rate rises each year, Italy's population declines by about 180,000 people a year. The population has fallen below 59 million and, if current trends continue, is likely to drop to 48 million by 2070.
This can be clearly seen with the naked eye. There are so many elderly men in Italian cities that the "umarell" phenomenon has become a meme: it's a flattering term for pensioners who gather around construction sites with their hands behind their backs to watch the progress.
At the same time, the base of the population pyramid is getting thinner. In 2022, only 392,500 children were born in the entire country, and the fertility rate is already 1.25. In Sardinia, the situation is even more pronounced, with a fertility rate of 0.95.
That is why schools are constantly being closed in the country: in the last nine years, 2,600 children's and youth schools have been closed, and according to calculations, within a decade there will be a million and a half fewer students, which means even more closures. Many remote country villages have been turned into ghost towns that fill up only during the long summer vacations.
In almost all statistical indicators affecting the birth rate, Italy is already in a deviation. The country holds the European record for the highest age of mothers giving birth for the first time (31.4 years). This is partly due to the fact that 70.5% of Italians between the ages of 18 and 34 still live with their parents - an effective contraceptive if ever there was one.
The lack of births is also due to basic economic reasons: according to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Italy is the only country where real wages actually fell between 1990 and 2020: the average gross wage of almost €27,000 per year is 12% lower than the European average and 23% lower than Germany. "I can't afford to have a child," said Kiara, a 32-year-old woman interviewed by the Guardian.
Such minimum wages mean that most would-be parents must both work, but in reality only 51.3% of women of working age in Italy are actually employed (compared to over 70% in Germany and the UK and 68% in France).
Professor Arnstein Aasve, a demographer of Norwegian origin at Bocconi University in Milan, claims: "There is something that just doesn't work in Italy. It's as if young people can't start somehow."
He highlights the fact that Italy has the second highest proportion of young people between 15 and 29 in the European Union: 19%, compared to an EU average of 11.7%. At the same time, many of the most capable and ambitious Italians have fled abroad in search of better opportunities: of the 5.8 million Italians who live abroad, 36.3% are under the age of 34.
It is often suggested that fewer children are born in Italy because, paradoxically, the family is so dominant. Given that in Italy the welfare system is very weak, families are burdened with caring for their parents or grandchildren, providing transport, kindergartens and housing. It is as if the obligations to one family prevent the creation of another.
The issue of the country's demographic crisis is rising on the political agenda, as the nationalist government of Giorgia Meloni sees the birth rate as a symbol of patriotic strength. In the past, she has often invoked a conspiracy theory known as "the great replacement," which claims that elites are deliberately replacing native white Europeans with immigrants. So for her, fertility is about racial survival. She appointed an anti-abortion family minister and attended rallies to increase the number of newborns to 500,000 a year.
Mussolini introduced a punitive tax on bachelors, and Meloni halved the VAT on nappies and baby milk. But getting the masses to start families is very difficult. And even if people decide to have more children, they start working and become taxpayers only two decades later.
There is a much quicker solution that is often touted by Italian demographers, but it is politically problematic for a right-wing government: immigration. Linda Laura Sabadini, Director at Istat was adamant that this is now the only answer.
"We need migrants," she said. "Only with more working-age migrants will the population grow immediately and ensure the pensions of a rapidly aging population are paid."
However, some believe that Italy should not even seek a solution. FutuRes is an EU-funded research project that challenges the common belief that older people are the problem and youth are the answer. Rather than trying to reverse an inevitable societal trend, the team of demographers, economists and policy experts crunched the numbers to show that the problem is not age but health, or that caring for the elderly is not necessarily a burden but a business opportunity.
After a century of failed fertility policies, perhaps this is the most sensible approach: to accept that the population pyramid is already inverted, and to design policies that take this reality into account rather than hoping to reverse it./ BGNES
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Tobias Jones, The Guardian
